Everett junior Brallier recovering after scare on the court

High school basketball notebook

February 4, 2013

Janet Brallier said her daughter, Everett Area High School junior Logan Brallier, wanted to make last Thursday's Inter-County Conference South Division game against Southern Huntingdon memorable for her Lady Warrior teammates, but this isn't what anyone had in mind.

The younger Brallier spent two days in the hospital after being knocked unconscious by an inadvertent elbow early in the fourth quarter of Everett's 65-29 win.

"It's something you never want to see happen," Janet Brallier said. "It's very scary."

Brallier was enjoying one of her best games of the season - her 11 points were fourth-most in a game this season and she was 3-of-4 from 3-point range - and was mere moments from coming out of the one-sided contest.

Everett coach Keith Moyer said Brallier was closing out on defense near midcourt when the player she was guarding, unaware of her, swung her arm back as she turned to dribble and caught her in the forehead. Brallier continued to play, even catching a pass and trying weakly to throw it back, but obviously something was wrong when she woozily went to sit on the bench. Moyer went to check on her.

"It's the first time a player has passed out in my arms," Moyer said. "Our kids were pretty upset. They brought out the defibrillator."

Brallier was taken from the gym, where she continued to lapse into and out of unconsciousness. She was given a CT scan at Bedford Hospital, then flown to Altoona for an EEG, an MRI and more tests and observation. She was intubated, so she was kept sedated and was only woken up from time to time to see if she could respond to simple commands, which she could.

Brallier was discharged on Saturday.

"We thank everyone for their prayers and thoughts," her mother said.

Brallier will be out of action for at least 30 days until she is examined again. She also missed the first three games of the season after sustaining a concussion on Dec. 4.

Brallier is averaging 9.3 points per game but had strung together three double-digit scoring efforts together for just the second time this year before being sidelined. The Lady Warriors are riding a seven-game winning streak.

"She thought, of course, she was going to play on Tuesday until she was told she wasn't," Janet Brallier said. "She's very competitive. She loves to play, and she loves to be with her teammates, so she's not enjoying the fact that she's not going to be able to play. But she's smart enough to realize she's not able to, either."

Down the stretch

District 6 teams in classes A through AAA have through Thursday night to garner points toward playoff seeding and decide whether or not they are going to enter the district tournament. District chairman T.J. Kakabar will get the facts and figures from each team on Friday morning and begin trying to figure everything out.

It's quite possible that the Mirror coverage area could produce four top seeds from that group. The Bishop Guilfoyle girls and Bishop Carroll boys probably have the Class A No. 1 seeds already sewn up.

Class AA, though, still seems to be up in the air. On the boys side, Bellwood-Antis and Bald Eagle Area are neck and neck, but the Eagles might be a little ahead because of their strength of schedule. Penn Cambria isn't far behind, either.

The Bellwood girls are in a similar situation in double-A girls. The Lady Devils only have one loss and almost as many wins as does Blairsville and BEA, but the Lady Bobcats and Lady Eagles have wins over Class AAAA and AAA teams that could give them the edge. Juniata and Westmont Hilltop are in the mix, too.

Any team can enter the District 6 tournament, but the seedings are done using a point system that gives a team four points for every win, an extra point for the classification rank of teams it has beaten and two extra points for beating a team with a winning percentage of at least 70. That number then is divided by games play.

Games played after Feb. 7 will not count toward District 6 seeding except in Class AAAA.